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I'm going to touch on a difficult topic that, unfortunately, as a teacher in the inner city, I see far too often. Teachers understand that students are unable to learn when they are not getting their basic needs met. When they are worried about receiving proper food, clothing, or hygiene products, students have very little room in their heads for reading or math. Navigating "official" routes through the various social workers, counselors, and psychologists can be very difficult, not to mention time consuming. I know that when I see my kids in need, I want to help them now, not a month or two down the road. It absolutely breaks my heart to see my kids struggling, so here are some resources that I have used in order to provide support to students who need it.

#5 Local Businesses
Local companies usually have funds available to donate to local schools and causes. It can be scary to cold call a company and ask for things for your school, but the worst they can say is no! We have had donations of school supplies, have them sponsor events, and even have them donate prizes for giveaways for good behavior or academics.

#4 Food Banks

Contact your local food bank and set up a food truck at the school. We've done this in years past and it's been very successful. The truck comes once or twice a month and passes out food to those in need. We'd always make it an academic portion too, and have a reading workshop in the gym to teach parents reading skills to share at home. Or have a math fair the same day where math games are being played. Building a sense of community is paramount in an inner city school.

#3 Facebook Sponsors

Working with students who often go without can be extremely heartbreaking, especially during the holiday seasons. I worked with an amazing teacher who sought a way to fix that. She reached out to her Facebook friends and family looking for people she knew to sponsor a kid. These sponsors wrote back and forth throughout the kids throughout the year, and made sure that they got a gift at Christmas. Nothing big or fancy. Usually it was just school supplies, but the it was special to see the connections formed through these letters, and exciting for the kids to receive a gift that they otherwise may not have gotten. It's a simple request to your friends and family who may be looking for ways to give back to the community and simply don't know how.

#2 Local Churches

A few years ago, we had classroom supplies donated to us by a local church. These supplies kept our classrooms running and fully supplied for the entire year. My church that I attend sponsors a local elementary school and provides tutoring, supplies, and clothing to students there. Sometimes all it takes is reaching out to churches and letting them know that there is a need. A beautiful relationship can be built that will not only help the students, but also connects the community!

Many of us use this website in order to get materials for our classrooms, but Donorschoose.org can also be very helpful in getting food, clothing, and hygiene products into students hands quickly. Donorschoose.org has created a separate category of project just for meeting basic needs of students. I have created and had funded two of these projects. One of my projects was to get nonperishable food into my classroom. I found that kids came to school late after breakfast had been served and would be very hungry. This project allowed me to have food on hand to pass out as needed. My second project was for things like deodorant, toothbrushes, socks, and underwear. I was very lucky to have both of my basic needs projects funded within a matter of days and had the supplies in my classroom within a week!

This past summer I started reading all the posts by teachers that had jumped on the FLEXIBLE SEATING wagon. I was skeptical. I looked at all the pictures people were posting and I started asking myself could this work for me?

It might be expensive? Would it work? Would the kids become crazy and be bouncing off the walls? Yes... Maybe... I don't know! The only thing I did know was that if I was kid I would LOVE this! I started planning. I truly wasn't sure where to even start. I decided that simple was the first rule.

We set up a meeting area for most of our direct instruction. I just put two 8x10 carpets together and it was plenty of space for the kids to sit.

No desks? My first question.... what to do with their pencil boxes? Everyone keeps their crayons and a pencil in a plastic box with their name on it. We store them on top of a shelf and the kids get them whenever they need them. We store all of the scissors, glue, paper, and other supplies into labeled bins and the kids just go get whatever they need and return it when they are finished.

Where will they all sit to do independent work? Over the summer I found a few things here and there to get us started. Like all teachers I "borrowed" a few things from my own house! We had some mats, a bunch of plastic chairs, and a few other items. I bought three carpets to put in different areas and was able to score two long tables at the school. We started small and everyone was able to try out all the different places they could pick from. My original thought was I have 20 kids so I need 20 spaces... I was wrong!

They argued because someone always was last and didn't get the type of seat they liked. I had to fix this to make the experience better for the kids and save my own sanity. I began researching how people funded flexible seating and took the JUMP!

I wrote my first Donor's Choose project. I was extremely lucky and Target paid all but $97 of it. My sweet classroom parents and my own family funded the rest within 2 hours. I WAS OVER THE MOON!

We waited and waited for those first packages to arrive. Once they did our classroom took on a new shape. We had over 40 different places to sit and everyone was always able to find a spot that made them happy. It has transformed our classroom and helped us build a truly positive community.

We love the bean bag chairs and if we are reading a friend can join us!

We were able to get 2 of these fun chairs with Donor's Choose and they are a FAVORITE!
That SMILE is worth it all!

Safari themed bath mats have proved to be easy to move to anyplace they want to work.
I also scored a bunch of green fuzzy mats at Dollar General for $4.

These stools made by Big Joe are great for laying on or working on!

I was able to get my hands on two of the SCOOP chairs! The kids love them! I was worried that second graders might not fit in them, but I was wrong.

I was also worried about their handwriting! Would they write super messy?

NO WAY!

It has never been better!

We have 6 of these green lap desks from Amazon.

What about pencils?
Oh, the PENCIL WAR!
Every year I try different things to make it through the year without spending fortune on pencils. I've tried it all and nothing ever seems to work until flexible seating came along. I put the "Need Sharpened" bin away from the "Ready to Write" bin.

Two locations and it has worked like a charm.

I know you are not going to believe this, but I have only had to restock the bin TWO times all year! I've actually thrown some away because they were NUBS! I can't say the same for the cap erasers. We have gone through a TON, but that is OK because I still have a ton of pencils from the kids beginning of the year supplies left!

So I was really curious as to why this happened. Why are the pencils lasting? It makes no sense. We are writing the same amount of work as last year.... the difference....

NO DESKS!!!!!!

The kids can't bury 100 pencils in the back of their

desk and get a new one!

I wanted our classroom to truly be flexible, so we don't pick specific spots each day/week and we can move to different spots whenever we need to. When we move to do independent work I either send the girls or boys first. They find a seat and then the other group goes.

What happens if someone gets up to get something they need? Our rule is simple if you leave a spot, leave your stuff then it will be there when you get back. Your spot is SAVED if something is sitting on it. Leave your paper, pencil box, or book. It was something that we had to practice and talk about, but now we have no disagreements over spots.

Is it easy at first? No! I had to figure it out for myself and make adjustments to make it work for me. We did a lot of modeling and sometimes a friend needs a reminder about the "rules". But I can say without a DOUBT, I LOVE FLEXIBLE SEATING!

Am I glad I did it? YES, YES, YES! Now, I am busy creating a V.I.P. Table for the classroom! Stay Tuned!

Sensory table and hands-on activities are not just for preschool. When I left preschool and headed into kindergarten, everyone was surprised I brought my sensory table with me. Do children really change that much from 4K to kindergarten?

Just as we adapt lessons to the changing needs of our students, adjustments can be made to keep the sensory table relevant in your kindergarten classroom.

Why are Sensory Table/Hands-On Activities Important?As I stated above, children do not change much from preschool to kindergarten. From a young age children are multi-sensory learners. They explore their environment using all of their senses. Hence they are naturally oriented towards sensory experiences. Stimulating their senses sends signals to their brain, which help strengthen neural pathways. This of course is important for all types of learning. When a child uses more than one of their senses, they are making more neural connections, which may help them retain the information for longer periods of time. Sensory tables are a perfect way for children to explore using their senses.

How do you use the sensory table in your classroom?The sensory table is used each week as a word work center. Students visit the center during their ELA rotation. I set strict rules in the beginning of the year, that they need to complete the activity prior to playing at the center. It is my way to "sneak" play into the classroom. Some of my favorite February/March sensory table activities are:

Digging for "Secret" Dinosaur Bones. During Halloween, I purchased a bag of plastic bones. Prior to the unit I used a fine tip marker and wrote sight words in really small letters. I filled the sensory table with sand, paint brushes, small shovels and sand sifters. The boys and girls worked to dig up the bones and used a magnifying glass to read the words. Then, write the words on a piece of paper and read the words to a friend.

Lily Pad/Frog Sight Word Sort . I cut green foam sheets to look like lily pads. Then, I purchased plastic frogs from the dollar tree. I choose three to four sight words and wrote the sight word on the lily pads and the bottom of the frogs. I filled the sensory table with water and added the foam pieces and frogs. The boys and girls worked to pair the frogs with the matching lily pad.

The Problem

If you've spent any time teaching in middle school, you realize it has its own special set of problems. On3 thing I'm $ur3 uv $een i$ thi$. No I haven't started writing in heiroglyphs. I've actually had kids hand in similar work to me, their ELA teacher! Or how about this gem: Hi! I'm Ashley and I'm going to explain why the main character was super sad and then a bunch of stuff happened and now she is super happy! Yes, this has also been handed in to me. Their ELA teacher. On a test.

The Solution

Ok, so you don't want to decipher teenage slang writing anymore, but how do you make it stop? Many, many years ago, to keep myself from having a stroke while reading assignments, I came up with a relatively painless way to help my kids understand the difference between language that is appropriate for schoolwork and language that is appropriate to use with friends. Part of the reason I like this lesson is I start it off with a clip from the old TV show, Martin.

Come on, that's just funny. After we watch the part with Martin and Cole in the classroom, I have the kids list all of the inappropriate elements in the show. There are a lot and they love writing them down. We share them as a whole class and then we move onto my Formal vs. Informal Language Worksheet. (Bonus-it's a freebie in my store!)

In the worksheet, there are a set of scenarios with an intended audience for each. The students have to decide if the language is formal or informal and then if it matches the intended audience. They have to rewrite the scenarios to fit the intended audience for homework. A lot of my kids come from low income homes or homes where English is not spoken. I want my kids to know that it's okay to use informal language in certain situations, but they have to know when and where formal language is necessary. They seem to appreciate that I take their home life into consideration; that I just don't say that informal language is always wrong.

The Results

Believe it or not, this works. I never get essays with the: Hi, my name is...." intro after this lesson. It also seriously cuts down on the other issues as well. Now if I could only get them to stop putting apostrophes in plural nouns, I might be able to read their work without cringing!

Looking to bring more kindness in the world? Here is a project that our kindergarten class did last year that was extremely successful! Every year we work on a PBL (project based learning). The big components of a true PBL project are quality content, 21st century skills, inquiry, a solid driving question, need to knows, voice and choice, revision and reflection, and a public audience.This is such a wonderful way to engage your students in learning across the curriculum and becoming 21st century learners!

We started with a driving question...How can we spread kindness into our world? (What a great question ~ and coming from 5 year olds? I always learn a lot from my 5 year olds!)

First:We brainstormed together and came up with this chart.(See below) We had been writing letters to each other during Daily 5 and realized how happy they made us...so that brought us to start writing to others in our school to make them feel good too! (So that is how we thought we could spread kindness at our school)

We brought a bag full of kindness books from our library

and discussed the character of each story and went over the similar traits the characters had in order to be kind. A few of our favorites books were: The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig and Enemy Pie by Derek Munson. Then we watched Enemy Pieon video and then reread Enemy Pie by Derek Munson to take a closer look at what a good friend really is?

After discussing Enemy Pieand going over what the ingredients of a friendship pie would be, we wrote our own recipes. Click herefor a copy.

Second: Then we talked about our home. How can we spread kindness at our home? We started doing chores to help our parents. Third: We are so fortunate to have firefighters come in every month and teach us about fire safety. So we thought we would like to return the kindness to them in some way.

School After we had written grateful letters to our Principal, secretaries, custodian, and our 4th grade buddies, we looked a little further into how we could help our school be a kinder place. We found the buddy bench! But how were we going to pay for a buddy bench? So, we brainstormed even more and decided we could do chores at home and earn money towards this project!

The parents loved this idea and started sending envelopes with their chore

money to go towards purchasing the buddy bench. We also talked to our PTA

and our Principal to help fund the rest of the project! and ... WE did it! Here is our new

buddy bench for our school~

There are many types of benches, but this is the one we selected.

We created a video to teach the rest of the school how to use the buddy bench. Our parents came in to watch the video at the end of the year and were able to see it at our school. Community: For our final part of the project we visited the FIREMAN! Yeah! We each wrote letters to the fireman and delivered them in person!

This turned out to be such a wonderful project! We used our academic skills but also learned a lot about being a good friend. Our biggest take-away was learning to spread kindness everywhere we go! Please let me know if you have done a PBL that you can share with us. I would love to hear about it! Come visit our blog to see other PBLs we have done in our classroom at 2 Scoops of Kindergarten blog.

Let’s face it, we’ve all heard about teachers who have had problems with administrators. It is a growing trend. The reality is, just like for teachers, their jobs are changing. They are under constant threat of loss of jobs due to behavior choices, poor administrative task completion, and the dreaded test scores. Even good administrators have flipped on a dime! So what is a teacher to do! Here are some ideas.

Look to Your Faith for Help

Honestly, this is a MUST! When we begin to ask for help spiritually, we can begin to see that person as a human and in need of help and support as well as us. It can also put our behavior in the spotlight, showing us what we need to do to change and grow, even if it isn’t “me”. When we reflect through scripture readings or other spiritual options, we can begin to find the peace we need to battle through, and back, in a more positive, understanding way.

Support Each Other

It is typical of teachers to bail on the “ONE” that the administrator is going after, even if they know that person is innocent or is being specifically targeted. Why, oh why, do we do this! There is safety in numbers, and support. When we band together and support one anther, the least that happens is that person still feels like part of the staff. One thing that is the goal of most administrative issues is to get that person to feel alone. NOT GOOD! We must support each other! If you are currently the “ONE”, go to other teachers and ask for help in whatever area it is that you are struggling in. We all have stories of things we’ve seen or times we’ve worked through similar problems. You need to get other teachers to help you and be there for you. Remaining positive is key. Don’t always point to the administrator, but ask what you can do to make it better and hear what they have to say.

Get the Help of Your Local Union

Yes, you must get this kind of help. If the ultimate goal of any kind of issue is to get you alone, you need to find support through your union. Join it, learn, and use their services. What you say is and can always be used against you. Stop yourself and ask for union representation! Do not believe that you can stand alone and win. This is rare. They want you to be isolated and helpless. Get the help right away. If that means you have to join, join! In this day and age, that membership is worth its weight in GOLD!

Stop Taking Home Extra Work!

Yep, that’s right! This goes against everything we want to do when there is trouble in our work lives! However, you will need to recoup and recover from the trials of the day or the time you are walking through. Don’t try and cover yourself with work to fix the problem. You need to breathe at home-finding hope and strength to get through the next day! Just by being free at night, you may discover something about the situation that can help you the next day to make it through! Rely on this time to bring clarity and hope for your situation. It’s worth it!

Smile!

Yep, over and over again. Not in a way that is fake or uncaring. Not in a way that makes people think you are a total crazy woman. But, in a way that all of the things above are pointing too! You have to know that the system is so broken right now that no one knows which way is up! That means you aren’t alone, because somewhere, someone is with you in this journey. It may be that smiling kid that is happy everyday because you are there with them. Isn’t that worth the smile, for just that kid! Maybe today you did an AWESOME lesson-who cares if no one saw it-SMILE! Every day there is something to smile about. And one smile can make two, and two can make four, until happiness is bigger than the one time that that administrator is around. The happier you are, the more likely the situation will turn for the better. Why, because you decided on being happy!

I hope I’ve given you some good points to think about. If, today, this is you, and your administrator has “come at you”, stop and work through some of these ideas.You just may find that you can carry on and you CAN do this thing! When you get to the other side, you will see all that carried you through and be thankful for the growth and change within you too!

Research has proven
time and again that hands- on learning leads to more critical thinking, better problem
solving, increased information retention, and more authentic understanding. We’ve
known this for years and yet some teachers still prefer outdated rote learning
techniques, drilling students with piles of worksheets each day. There isn’t necessarily
anything wrong with this approach,
but there are so many other ways to help children learn! One thing that isn’t
mentioned as much in all the research about hands- on learning…it’s FUN! Kids love it,
it’s motivating, and it makes students want
to learn more. So let’s ditch the worksheets and gets kids actively engaged in more
multi-sensory learning!

I’m going to show you
one way to practice letters, numbers, and sight words with a fun totally “hands-on”
material: Play dough! Yup, your students are going to love it and they’ll want
to practice all day. Play dough is always a hit with kids and is a wonderful
kinesthetic activity to use with young learners. Today I’m sharing my favorite
play dough recipe and a few activities I’ve used it with. If you try out this
recipe or have another one to share, I’d love to hear about it in the comments
below.

I’ve tried out tons
of recipes for homemade recipes over the years and this one is by far my
favorite. Although it does require cooking on a stovetop, it’s super easy
(no really, it is). It lasts for a very long time and only takes about 5
minutes to make. It's a great sensory and fine motor activity...but most
importantly, kids love it!

PLAY DOUGH RECIPE:

Ingredients:

1 Cup Flour

1/2 Cup Salt

2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar

1 Tablespoon Oil

1 Cup Water

Food Coloring

Directions:

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a pan. Add water and mix well. Cook over medium heat stirring for several minutes or until the dough begins to clump. Remove from stove and let it cool down. Once cool, add the dough to a Ziploc bag with food coloring and knead through to distribute the color.

I like to make several batches at once. I put each batch in a separate Ziploc
bag with a few drops of food coloring. The kids love squeezing and squishing
the color throughout the dough in the bag (all the fun without the mess or
stained hands).If you’re feeling
adventurous, try adding vanilla extract, cinnamon, Kool-Aid, Jell-O mix, or a
drop of essential oil to your dough to add some scent to your play dough. Fair warning though: If it smells
yummy, they might want to know out if it TASTES yummy too (and from what I’ve
been told, it doesn’t).

This play dough stays fresh for an amazingly long time stored in a Ziploc bag or sealed storage container. I’ve never thrown out batch because it dried out or went bad, butI always make a new one when it starts looking gross (after being dropped on the floor a few times, ew. Trust me, it will get gross). I like to give each student their own bag of play dough to avoid sharing germs… I think that’s just good practice especially during cold season.

Last week, I made
this play dough with my own boys at home and let them try out some of the resources
from my TpT store, Exceptional Thinkers. My
3-year-old hates getting his hands dirty so squishing the food coloring in the
bag was perfect for him. My 6-year-old would bathe in slime if I let him, so no
sensory aversions there. Once the play dough was ready, we practiced rolling
out long “snakes.” Then we made different shapes with our dough snakes: S’s,
circles, X’s, etc.

Once the boys got the
hang of manipulating the dough into shapes, I introduced the Play Dough Mats to
them (available HERE). Instead of laminating
tons of Play Dough mats, I created a binder for each child and slipped the mats
into sheet protectors. The 3-year-old practiced making letters and numbers,
while the 6-year-old worked on sight words. They loved it! They practiced their
letters, numbers and sight words for over an hour! The 3-year-old even tried
the Sight Word Mats while the 6-year-old helped him to read the words. Now
isn’t that better than worksheets?

I have several different Play
Dough Mat sets available at my Exceptional Thinkers store.
All of the sets can be purchased separately or as a Bundle at a discount price HERE.

My goal with this
post was to give readers one technique that would hopefully inspire them to try
out a more multi-sensory approach in the classroom. I know it can seem daunting
at first, but once you set your routine with your students, those hands- on
activities start to go on auto pilot. There is life after worksheets and your
students will love it.

Keep teaching. Keep
learning.

~Christy D. from
Exceptional Thinkers

If you’re not already
following Exceptional Thinkers on Pinterest, make sure to click HERE to do so. You
can also find me on Facebookright HERE. And of course, if you’re interested in
new products, updates, and freebies, follow me on Teachers Pay TeachersHERE.

Loving the unlovable, hard-to-love, and just plain difficult kids in your class can be a challenge. These are the students who really need us the most and often are the ones who push ALL of your buttons making it extremely difficult to teach not only them but the rest of your class.

So what can you do to build rapport with the hard-to-love students in your class? The following are some of the strategies and ideas I have found extremely successful with challenging students in my class.

If your students are
anything like mine (and I’m sure they are!), they need a LOT of movement during
the day.Movement helps them to get
their energy out, keeps them engaged, and makes learning a bit more fun!

My principal, someone I greatly admire, often advises me that you "get" what you pay attention to. What does he mean? If you pay attention to something in the classroom, you often get results. I think the greatest example of this in my journey has been learning to teach reading fluency. Fluency was something we were not measuring when we were awarded a grant to fund a reading specialist ten years ago. However, when we started to universally assess students, we realized that we had a gap in our reading instruction. We used Tim Rasinski's book The Fluent Reader to help us learn how to improve our instruction.

Reading fluency takes time to develop in primary students. According to Rasinski, fluency instruction has two main parts: automaticity and prosody. Automaticity is the ability to read text automatically and at a rate that promotes comprehension. Prosody is reading with appropriate expression which also aides comprehension. When reading is not automatic, students expend too much mental energy decoding and recognizing words, so they are unable to pay attention to meaning. This blog post is going to focus on strategies to help young students develop the automaticity they need to read at an appropriate rate. Of course these strategies would also be helpful for older students who are not reading at grade level.

Automaticity is developed through lots of reading practice, and it has to begin with a high degree of scaffolding which helps both developing readers and struggling readers. Rasinski calls these strategies assisted reading, but it can also be called shared reading. I would like to share three shared reading strategies that help develop fluency.

Choral Reading
This type of shared reading can be done with your whole group or in small groups. It is simply reading text together such as a chorus sings songs together. Texts are typically short and on grade level. Poems and songs work well but you can use any type of text.

A few types of choral reading:

Line per Child - Each child or small groups of two or three students, reads a line or two of text until the piece is completed. This is planned ahead of time and all students follow along with the text. It differs from round robin reading in the fact that students get a chance to see their part ahead of time.

Cumulative Choral Reading - One group of children reads the first line. The next group joins in to read the second line of text with the first group. The next group joins on the third line etc. By the end, the entire class is reading together.

Echo - The teacher reads a sentence and then the class or a few students echos the lines. This can be powerful as long as you insist they are reading, not just listening to the teacher.

Antiphonal - Divide the class into groups and each group takes a part. Student groups take turns reading chunks of text. For a longer piece, the reading goes back and forth between the groups and starts to sound like a conversation.

Paired Reading
This type of shared reading happens when two readers are paired together to read at the same time, but one reader is more skilled than the other. Some possible pairings are:

A parent and child

A teacher and child

A more fluent child and less fluent child

The key to this type of reading is that both readers are reading at the same time. One reader gently pushes the other to become more fluent. This can be very effective practice.

Buddy Reading
This type of shared reading is when two students read together. (Buddy reading can also be call partner reading and this type can also happen at home with a parent or sibling.) This strategy helps to keep both students accountable and creates a social environment to practice reading. Students need to be sharing the same book for it to work well. They can vary how they read by either taking turns or reading together but a key ingredient is that both students are reading. Teachers can help students by structuring the reading time in some way and having explicit expectations. I have a freebie in my store that helps to structure this type of reading. In the set below students use spinners to help the partners create a routine for buddy reading. You can grab this freebie here.

As I said before, you get what you pay attention to. When you pay attention to fluency, you develop stronger all around readers. There are many other ways to develop fluency so please share your strategies in the comments below!

When approaching math with young children it can seem daunting at first. There is just so much to learn!! If you take a minute to think about all the math we can simply "just do" without even a moment's thought, it seems crazy that once upon a time we were those children. The great thing about math is how it relies on cold hard facts. The numbers behave the way they do because math is predictable.

The predictability of math is what makes the basics a pleasure to teach. The realisation on a child's face when they "get it" is an amazing moment to witness! The fact is, when someone "gets" something their burning desire to learn more is stoked and they activity seek out more knowledge.

We've all had those days when we *ALL* needed a brain break! A few years ago, while attending a creative thinking training, I learned about this amazing technique called S.C.A.M.P.E.R!

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. increases higher order thinking!

It can be used on its own, or incorporated into curriculum units. It can take as little as 20 minutes, depending on your level of kids. (For SURE you'll want to go through the process with your students ahead of time, but they'll get the hang of it in no time!)

Here's how it works: Your students choose an object- actual ones in the classroom or a photograph of an object work best- and they think creatively to change the original idea into something new!

Students do NOT have to do every component of S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

(This is a great way to differentiate for your various levels of learners.)